1 EMERGENCE, MASTERY, AND DISTRIBUTION – CAN ACQUISITION CRITERIA BE COMBINED? Maisa Martin University of Jyväskylä, Finland

2 RESEARCH QUESTION What combinations of linguistic features characterise learners’ performance in written tasks at the proficiency levels defined in the Common European Framework, the Finnish National Core Curriculum and the National Certificates examination system? RESEARCH FRAMEWORK SLATE network – European cooperation of SLA researchers and language TEsters: Stages of second-language acquisition and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages CEFLING – Finnish research group, member of SLATE: The linguistic basis of the Common European Framework levels: Combining second language acquisition and language testing research

3 BACKGROUND Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) very influential in Finland: -school curricula -adult education curricula -National Certificates of Proficiency -citizenship requirements > Important to know how the linguistic performance of the learners is related to their communicative performance

4 SUBJECTS AND DATA Writing performances of adults taking the National Certificate of Proficiency (NCP) examination (3 texts per subject) Similar texts from young learners (grades 7 – 9, ages 13-16) L2 Finnish – L1 varies L2 English – L1 Finnish Performances rated with communicative scales (CEFR, NCP, school curricula) Data being collected. Target: 100 texts per task.

5 ACQUISITION CRITERIA Essential for showing development Must be comparable across different domains of linguistic acquisition (various structures, vocabulary) and across languages (L2 Finnish & English) Relative clauses here as a test domain, many structures currently piloted

6 DEMfad Model (Franceschina et al. 2006) D EM f a d D = Domain (here relative clauses) E = Emergence M = Mastery f = frequency a = accuracy d = distribution

7 WHY DEMfad Model? Emergence of a structure not sufficient alone to show development Mastery hard to define (variance in L1 production, slips, avoidance strategies…) Focus on stages of development and combinations of features prototypical of these stages Development seen as complex set of presence and absence of structures

8 THE PILOT DOMAIN: RELATIVE CLAUSES OF FINNISH Relativization hierarchy (Keenan & Comrie 1977): subject > direct object > indirect object > oblique > genitive > object of comparison - order contested - all are possible in Finnish Relative pronoun –is inflected = marked for the syntactic role within the relative clause and number, which must be in congruence with the relativized NP in the the main clause –can represent any NP of the relative clause –non-typical word order (rel. pronoun always first) Finnish is SVO > relativising S requires embedding > COMPLEX PROCESSING AND LEARNING TASK

9 RELATIVE CLAUSE AS AN INDICATOR OF F2-DEVELOPMENT Previous results in terms of the Processability Theory (Martin 2004) –experimental data –contradictory results: relative clauses acquired before phrase internal agreement Results in Iso-Heiniemi 2006 –Data from National Certificate of Proficiency examinations (493 texts) –results indicate development but not in a linear way

10 CEFR Level TextsWordsWords / Text Relative clauses Relative clauses / Text Texts with at least one relative clause Variation A = 10%0 – 3 B = 24%0 – 5 C = 40%0 - 3 Total / Average = 25% Table 1: THE FREQUENCY OF RELATIVE CLAUSES IN NCP DATA

11 Table 2: THE ACCURACY OF RELATIVE CLAUSES IN THE NCP DATA CEFR Level Relative clauses Target-like A14 6 = 42% B3020 = 67% C5142 = 82% Total / Average 9568 = 72%

12 Table 3: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SYNTACTIC ROLES OF THE RELATIVIZED MAIN CLAUSE NPs CEFR Level SubjectObjectAdvPPredicate comple- ment Zero or the whole clause Total A B C Total

13 Table 4: THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SYNTACTIC ROLES OF THE RELATIVE PRONOUNS IN THE RELATIVE CLAUSES CEFR LevelSubjectObjectAdvPNoun comple- ment Total A B C Total / Average

14 EMERGENCE & MASTERY Emergence criterium alone not useful in distinguishing between levels, as examples of various types are found at all communicative skill levels Mastery criterium alone not useful in distinguishing between levels, as errors of various types are found at all communicative skill levels

15 EMERGENCE > MASTERY Frequency grows across the levels (Table 1) Accuracy grows across the levels (Table 2) Distribution erratic across the levels (Table 3 and Table 4), however: –(Target-like) zero NP common at level A –Relativization similar at level B and C –Main clause O > Relative clause S typical of –level B –Subject relativization (requiring embedding of the relative clause) present at all levels –AdvP relativized typically at level C –No word order problems

16 SO WHAT? The ultimate aim of CEFLING is NOT to go back to basing testing on the mastery of structures or vocabulary but to find out what it takes to communicate at a given CEFR level, to help learners and teachers to concentrate their efforts on what is prototypically needed to proceed from one communicative level to the next.

17 Problems remaining choice of relevant domains presentation of combined descriptors presentation of combinations of domains > long way to go >

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19 SLATE and CEFLING MEMBERS SLATE participants U OF Amsterdam: Jan Hulstijn, Rob Schoonen, Arjen Florijn, Nivja de Jong, Margarita Steinel, Folkert Kuiken, Ineke Vedder, Marije Michel U of Lancaster: Charles Alderson, Florencia Franceschina, Jayanti V. Banerjee U of Louvain: Sylviane Granger, Jennifer Thewissen U of Jyväskylä: Maisa Martin, Ari Huhta U of Provence: Daniel Véronique U of Paris VIII: Mireille Prodeau, U of Dortmund: Günter Nold U pf Köln: Christiane M. Bongartz U of Modena e Reggio Emilia: Gabriele Pallotti U of Verona: Camilla Bettoni U of Stockholm: Inge Bartning, Fanny Forsberg, Kenneth Hyltenstam CEFLINGS Researchers: Riikka Alanen Hannele Dufva Ari Huhta Paula Kalaja Maisa Martin Katja Mäntylä Mirja Tarnanen Doctoral students: Helena Miettinen Sanna Mustonen Nina Reiman Marja Seilonen Kati Surakka MA students: Taru Kynsijärvi Vilja Paavola

20 REFERENCES Franceschina, F. & Alanen, R. & Huhta, A & Martin, M 2006: Presentation at SLATE Workshop, Amsterdam, 1 December 2006 Iso-Heiniemi, E. 2006: Relatiivilauseen ja partisiippimääritteen kehittyminen s2-oppijoiden kirjoitelmissa. MA thesis, Dept. of Finnish, University of Tampere. Keenan, E. & Comrie, B Noun Phrase Acessability Hierarchy and Universal Grammar. In Keenan, E. (Ed.) Universal Grammar. 15 essays. P. 3 – 45. London: Croom Helm linguistics series. Keenan, E. 1985: Relative clauses. In T. Shopen (Ed.) Language typology and syntactic description II.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Martin, M. 2004: Three structures of Finnish and the Processability Theory. In Ekberg, L. & Håkansson G. (Eds.) NORDAND 6. Sjätte konferensen om Nordens språk som andraspråk, 201 – 212. Lund: Lunds universitet, Institutionen för nordiska språk. Pallotti, G. An operational definition of the emergence criterion. * CEFLING Funding: * Academy of Finland * University of Jyväskylä: Department of Languages & Centre for Applied Language Studies